Kimberly Wiefling, author of Scrappy Project Management, offers some advice over at Web Worker Daily for keeping team projects together and moving forward. Her best advice, however, applies equally to personal projects:

Make the goals as clear as possible. Say the goal is launching a new website. "Often, [teams] find out they don't all have the same idea of what success is six months from now," said Wiefling. "Is it just launching the prototype? Is it the home page works, but everything else is clunky? What about bug free. Is it full of bugs or working smoothly? How long does a page take to load? A lot of details get lost in some of the high level, 'Hey, get the site up in six months.'" Make sure the goal looks the same to everybody.

In both full-time jobs and working freelance, I've found that most disastrous big-package projects fell apart precisely because the two sides of the table never agreed on goals in the first place. How do you ensure everyone you're working with (and for) knows what the true goals are? Share your thoughts in the comments.

 

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